And yet another BBP experiment: saison style craft beer spiced with yuzu (a Japanese kind of citrus fruit, quite popular these days) and sansho (a peppery kind of seeds from a Zanthoxylum bush, also known as Korean pepper). Medium thick, snow white, lightly lacing head, quite regular in shape and retaining well, over an initially clear, warm ’old gold’ coloured beer with visible sparkling and an almost pinkish, weird, champagne-coloured tinge to it. Aroma of hard green pear, freshly grated horseradish, banana peel, cooked turnip, quite strong DMS (cooked cauliflower) almost ruining everything else, dried orange peel (I guess this must be the yuzu), pink peppercorns (the sansho no doubt - but relatively subtly so), bread crust, old potatoes, cold French fries even, baking powder, peanuts, hints of dried apricot, withering wormwood leaves and bitter dandelions or other garden herbs, salsify, dried camomile flowers. Crisp, spritzy onset, lots of sharpish carbonation, very minerally, distracting from an underlying fruitiness of peach, apple, pear and light unripe (green) banana, only remotely sweetish, some soft sourishness edging it, supple and slick mouthfeel - made more harsh by that strong carbonation. Dry old bread- and cereal-like malt core, a bit on the thin side considering there is a long, drying, wormwood-like, very firm hop bitterness afoot, dominating the finish, with some refreshing citrus elements (the yuzu, but in a dry, subtle and rather ’anonymous’ kind of way) and a spiciness which could indeed come from that sansho, but in such an unexpressive way that I might just as easily have ascribed it to the hops themselves. Ends dry, a tad yeasty and ’dusty’, with a long-lasting peppery bitterness. Spicy, quenching beer, but the DMS kept bothering me (as it always does whenever present - and it is very often present in new Belgian ales regardless of whether they want to reinforce old traditions or catch the innovation train like this brewery does); as usual with BBP, a well-intended idea not carried out to technical perfection. Not their worst creation so far, but far from the best. Without that DMS, this may have worked for me, but then I still think it would lack some malt ’rotundity’ to carry this amount of hop bitterness and ’sansho’ pepperiness. I also expected more ’fra�cheur’ from the yuzu - this citrus effect, Japanese or not, should have been a lot more bright. Bit of a missed opportunity, really.

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